As Crisis Festers, Pakistani Government Plans Confidence Vote

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Threatened with prosecution by a hostile judiciary and fearing an intervention by powerful generals, Pakistan’s embattled government turned Friday to its last bastion of strength, the national Parliament, in a bid to stall the momentum of a crisis that threatens to engulf the governing party.

Addressing Parliament, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani announced that he would ask for a vote Monday on a resolution seeking “full confidence and trust” in his coalition government. It was his latest gambit in a complex power struggle set off by the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May.

Pakistan’s fractious politicians must choose between “democracy and dictatorship,” Mr. Gilani said, speaking hours after President Asif Ali Zardari returned from a brief trip to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, that reignited rumors of an impending military coup.

Pakistani analysts and Western diplomats believe that the prospects of a coup are receding, for now. But the situation remains volatile as the country’s most powerful figures — senior judges, generals and politicians — engage in a bare-knuckle and unusually public bout of power games in which the United States finds itself sidelined.

At heart, the governing Pakistan Peoples Party and the military, led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, are struggling for control of national security policy, including the right to direct the strained relationship with the United States. A strident judiciary and the possibility of elections as early as this summer add complicating factors.

The beginning of the struggle came in the fall, when an American businessman of Pakistani origin, Mansoor Ijaz, made a startling claim: that in the acrid aftermath of the Bin Laden raid on May 2, he had been asked to take a secret letter to the Americans seeking protection for Mr. Zardari’s government from a possible military coup. In exchange, it offered to dismantle part of the country’s powerful spy agency.

Pakistan’s military angrily demanded an investigation into the unsigned memo and embraced Mr. Ijaz’s assertion that it had been dictated by Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington. Mr. Haqqani, since recalled to Pakistan, has denied that account.

However, the military ignored a later statement by Mr. Ijaz that Lt. Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, visited the Persian Gulf region during the same period to seek support for a coup.

A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court is investigating what the Pakistani news outlets call “Memogate” and is scheduled to make its finding by month’s end. Meanwhile Mr. Haqqani, who could face treason charges, has confined himself to Mr. Gilani’s house in Islamabad, telling reporters that he fears for his life.

The true target of the inquiry may be Mr. Haqqani’s boss: Mr. Zardari, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party. The P.P.P. and the military have a deep mutual mistrust going back three decades. Many generals barely disguise their loathing for the president, who came to power in 2008, in elections after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and who has struggled to shake off a reputation of irredeemable corruption.

Photo

President Asif Ali Zardari in July. His visit Thursday to Dubai set off rumors of a potential coup.Credit
Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For most of 2011, his government sought to ease the tension by defending the embattled generals, particularly against withering domestic criticism after the Bin Laden raid from a public distrustful of the United States and fiercely protective of their nation’s sovereignty. But the rising emotions over the Memogate crisis swept any unity away.

In December, Mr. Gilani said he would not tolerate a “state within a state”; this week he fired the senior bureaucrat in the Defense Ministry, a retired three-star general. That day, the military issued a warning that the government’s statements could have “very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country.”

One analyst saw two rationales for the military’s furious stance over the memo. First, it could be using the Supreme Court to “get Zardari out,” said Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times and a senior analyst with Geo, the country’s largest television news network. Second, he said, “Kayani and Pasha have both been considerably weakened by the actions of the Americans.”

“They are having to act extra tough to appease their own ranks,” Mr. Sethi said.

The conflict shows that the military “is rigid and uncompromising and not prepared to concede an inch of its turf,” he added. “It wants to run foreign policy, it wants to be able to do whatever it wants, and doesn’t want any accountability at all.”

In the past, the military has ended frustrations with civilian governments with coups, in 1958, 1969, 1977 and 1999.

This time, analysts say, the military has little incentive for such a move. The economy is in a parlous state, a homegrown Taliban insurgency bubbles in the northwest, and the generals are still smarting from the damage to their reputation from the unpopular nine-year-rule of Pervez Musharraf, which began in the most recent coup and ended in 2008.

In addition, there is unprecedented, real-time scrutiny from a vociferous electronic news media. And the generals can no longer count on the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp a takeover — although the judiciary led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry appears to have its own antipathy for Mr. Zardari and the P.P.P.

As the scandal raged, the court upped the stakes by renewing its order that the government cooperate with a Swiss corruption investigation against Mr. Zardari. The court accused Mr. Gilani of “willful disobedience” for not doing so, and gave the government until Monday to comply. Failure could lead to Mr. Gilani’s losing his office, it has warned, offering the prospect of a disastrous clash of institutions.

Whether Mr. Chaudhry would risk such a standoff is unclear.

The likelihood of early elections is far greater. As power drains from Mr. Zardari’s government, few believe it will last until the Parliament’s term ends in February 2013. The question is when the vote would take place, and on whose terms.

The government’s objective is to survive until Senate elections, which are to be held before March. Senators are elected by the national and provincial assemblies, and the election will probably give the P.P.P. a majority of seats and control of the upper house for six years.

But a major opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, favors early general elections — to avert such a Senate outcome and to stem the threat from a new rival, the former cricket star turned politician Imran Khan. Mr. Khan is a wild card, drawing huge crowds at recent rallies in Lahore and Karachi and threatening Mr. Sharif’s base in Punjab Province. Critics accuse him of enjoying the tacit support of the ISI.

“I don’t think the army will mount a coup because they don’t need one when they have Imran Khan,” said C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University.

A version of this article appears in print on January 14, 2012, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: As Crisis Festers, Pakistani Government Plans Confidence Vote. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe